UPDATE 1-Qualcomm to pay Broadcom $8.6 mln over evidence
(Adds details from ruling, comment from Broadcom, byline)
By Gina Keating
LOS ANGELES, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A San Diego federal court on Monday ordered cell phone technology company Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) to pay $8.6 million to rival Broadcom Corp (BRCM.O) as sanction for failing to turn over hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence in a patent dispute.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Major also referred six of the company's outside lawyers to the state Bar of California for possible disciplinary action for suppressing more than 46,000 documents, mainly e-mails, in the patent case.
She rejected Qualcomm's argument that the documents, which undercut the company's patent case against Broadcom, had been inadvertently mislaid, citing the volume of evidence and the ease with which Qualcomm produced related documents that supported its case.
The judge did not grant Broadcom's request for independent oversight of Qualcomm's discovery efforts, but she did order the company and its attorneys to come up with a plan to identify and prevent failures in its case management and discovery protocol.
The fine, for what Major described as Qualcomm's "monumental and intentional discovery violation," is to be reduced by the amount Qualcomm was already ordered to pay for Broadcom's legal bills.
A Broadcom spokesman had no immediate comment on the ruling. A Qualcomm representative could not be reached immediately for comment.
The ruling comes days after a judge in an unrelated patent case ordered Qualcomm to stop producing some chips that infringed on Broadcom's patents and about six months after Broadcom requested the sanctions in a San Diego patent case.
In that lawsuit, Qualcomm had accused Broadcom of infringing on two patents covering high-definition video compression technology. A San Diego jury found in Broadcom's favor in the case last year.
Qualcomm's failure to turn over documents in the San Diego case came to light on the last day of testimony, when a witness revealed that her e-mails from a standards-setting body had not been delivered to Broadcom.
Qualcomm had aggressively argued that it had not participated in that standards-setting body until after the standard had been set -- a position that was undercut by the discovery of dozens of e-mails contradicting it.
"This argument was vital to Qualcomm," Major said, because if it had been involved in creation of the standard, Qualcomm would have had to license the disputed patents royalty-free or under "non-discriminatory, reasonable terms." (Editing by Gary Hill)
